Republican blames liberals for effects of law she voted for and they oppose

A politician in Florida found out that bans on abortion have very bad consequences:

Rep. Kat Cammack arrived at the emergency room in May 2024 terrified by what she had just learned: Her pregnancy could kill her at any moment. 

It would only get worse. The Florida Republican needed a shot of methotrexate to help expel her ectopic pregnancy, in which there is no way for the embryo to survive. Her state’s six-week abortion ban had just taken effect. She said doctors and nurses who saw her said they were worried about losing their licenses or going to jail if they gave her drugs to end her pregnancy.

She began arguing her case. The staff resisted, she said, even though doctors earlier that day estimated she was just five weeks pregnant. There was no heartbeat, and her life was at risk. She pulled up the state law on her phone for hospital workers to read. She said she called the governor’s office late at night for help, but no one picked up.

Hours later, doctors finally agreed to give her the methotrexate, Cammack said. 

The Florida ban, which took effect May 1, 2024, made abortions illegal after six weeks with limited exceptions. It didn’t ban procedures for ectopic pregnancies, but concern about the law’s wording made doctors hesitant, said patients and physicians. Months later, Florida regulators gave guidance to address what they called misinformation, making clear that doctors should intervene in cases such as Cammack’s.

Who’s to blame for this? The libs, of course:

Cammack doesn’t fault the Florida law for her experience. Instead, she accuses the left of scaring medical professionals with messaging that stressed that they could face criminal charges for violating the law. She said she feels those efforts gave medical staff reason to fear giving drugs even under legal circumstances.

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” she said. She also knows that abortion-rights advocates might see the opposite—that the Republican-led restriction caused the confusion. “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she said. Cammack declined to name the hospital where she received care.

Abortion-rights advocates say the law created the problems. While Florida regulators say ectopic pregnancies aren’t abortions and are exempt from restrictions, the law doesn’t define ectopic pregnancy, and it isn’t always easy for doctors to tell where an embryo has implanted, said Molly Duane, a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. 

Asked whether abortion-rights groups contributed to confusion, Duane said Florida regulators had stressed how seriously they planned to enforce the ban. She said blaming medical workers echoes the “playbook of antiabortion extremists that for decades have been blaming and villainizing doctors.” 

Dr. Alison Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said it is common for doctors in states that have restricted abortion access to worry “whether their clinical judgment will stand should there be any prosecution.”

There’s a reason why opponents of abortion refuse to accept amendments to abortion bans that would protect the judgment of doctors in cases like this — the chilling effect is the entire point. And this is why comparisons of American abortion bans to European regulations that require more paperwork for second-trimester abortions — doctors don’t get arrested for exercising medical judgment under the latter.